About Irvin Muchnick

Irvin Muchnick

IRVIN MUCHNICKis an independent journalist and author who specializes in sports muckraking. He has written for Sports Illlustrated, People, The Washington Monthly, and the Sunday magazines of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among many other major publications. He has appeared on media forums as diverse as National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the former Fox News program The O’Reilly Factor.

Muchnick is the author of three books and numerous ebooks.

A former assistant director of the National Writers Union, Muchnick spearheaded objections to a global copyright class action settlement that was renegotiated to satisfy the objections and ultimately, in 2018, to make final payments to claimant freelance writers. In 2010 the surrounding litigation had produced Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, a landmark Supreme Court decision. Publishers Weekly has called this set of cases, which began in 1994, “the central rights dispute of the digital age.”

Muchnick’s reporting, beginning in 1992, on the mysterious 1983 death of Nancy Argentino, the girlfriend of WWE star Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, in a Pennsylvania motel room drove the prosecution of Snuka more than 30 years later in what observers said was the longest-running homicide cold case in the history of Lehigh County.

Frank Deford, the late sportswriter, author, and public radio commentator, said: “Irv Muchnick produces magnificent investigative journalism…. He writes with passion and savage humor.”

Irv says:

Investigative journalism is not “peer-reviewed scientific literature.” It is a contact sport. My version of it favors transparent and interactive relationships with readers and sources. I also recognize that backstories and their interpretation are organic; I strive for what is, at best, the second draft of history.